PARIS — The public prosecutor agreed Monday to retry 14 of the 27 defendants in the case of Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man kidnapped, tortured and murdered in 2006, after Justice Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie called some of the sentences too lenient.

The office of the prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, moved with unusual speed to agree to ask the Court of Appeals to seek sentences longer than those handed out when the trial concluded on Friday. The 14 defendants received more lenient sentences than the prosecutor had originally demanded.

Those who will eventually be retried will not, however, include Youssouf Fofana, now 28, the ringleader of the gang known as the Barbarians, who was sentenced to a maximum sentence of life in prison, without possibility of parole for 22 years. Mr. Fofana was the only defendant convicted of murder.

His two closest accomplices also received relatively stiff sentences, but many of the defendants received lighter terms and two were acquitted. Some received six-month sentences that were suspended. The young woman who lured Mr. Halimi, who was 23, into the hands of his kidnappers, for instance, received a sentence of 9 years, although the prosecutor had sought 10 to 12 years.

Ms. Alliot-Marie and the prosecutor were responding to criticism from the lawyer for the Halimi family and major French Jewish associations, which had criticized some of the sentences as “particularly indulgent” given the anti-Semitic nature of the crime, which became a symbol of rising but crude anti-Semitism among young French Muslims.

Mr. Fofana was quoted in news accounts in 2006 as saying he wanted to kidnap a Jew because “they’re loaded with dough.”

Several hundred demonstrators, some carrying white flowers, French flags and portraits of Mr. Halimi, marched in Paris Monday night to praise Ms. Alliot-Marie and shout, “Justice for Ilan!”

There was criticism on Monday from a magistrates’ union that the government was bending to politics and interfering in justice. “Justice is different from vengeance,” said Emmanuelle Perreux, the union’s president.

Mr. Halimi was kidnapped in January 2006. He was tortured, burned and left for dead 24 days after he was seized, in a crime that shocked France. He died on the way to the hospital, and was buried a year later in Jerusalem.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/world/europe/14france.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

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